The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer | 
 enlarge | Author: Charles J. Murray
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 109852
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 232
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0471048852
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.76100411092
UPC: 723812048854
EAN: 9780471048855
ASIN: 0471048852
Publication Date: January 1997
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Amazon.com Review
The story of supercomputing is only partially about technology. More than anything, it's about the gifted, brilliant, and often eccentric individuals who knew how to use that technology in new ways to do amazing things. Perhaps the most amazing of the bunch was Seymour Cray, the bureaucracy-intolerant genius with the barnstorming mind whose name has become synonymous with supercomputers. Charles Murray gives us an insightful and often thrilling and sometimes amusing look into how Cray and his genius companions took computers to new heights and humbled companies like Control Data and IBM.
Product Description
The SUPERMEN
"After a rare speech at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, in 1976, programmers in the audience had suddenly fallen silent when Cray offered to answer questions. He stood there for several minutes, waiting for their queries, but none came. When he left, the head of NCAR's computing division chided the programmers. 'Why didn't someone raise a hand?' After a tense moment, one programmer replied, 'How do you talk to God?'" -from The SUPERMEN The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer
"They were building revolutionary, not evolutionary, machines. . . . They were blazing a trail-molding science into a product. . . . The freedom to create was extraordinary." -from The Supermen
In 1951, a soft-spoken, skinny young man fresh from the University of Minnesota took a job in an old glider factory in St. Paul. Computer technology would never be the same, for the glider factory was the home of Engineering Research Associates and the recent college grad was Seymour R. Cray. During his extraordinary career, Cray would be alternately hailed as "the Albert Einstein," "the Thomas Edison," and "the Evel Knievel" of supercomputing. At various times, he was all three-a master craftsman, inventor, and visionary whose disdain for the rigors of corporate life became legendary, and whose achievements remain unsurpassed.
The Supermen is award-winning writer Charles J. Murray's exhilarating account of how the brilliant-some would say eccentric-Cray and his gifted colleagues blazed the trail that led to the Information Age. This is a thrilling, real-life scientific adventure, deftly capturing the daring, seat-of-the-pants spirit of the early days of computer development, as well as an audacious, modern-day David and Goliath battle, in which a group of maverick engineers beat out IBM to become the runaway industry leaders.
Murray's briskly paced narrative begins during the final months of the Second World War, when men such as William Norris and Howard Engstrom began researching commercial applications for the code-breaking machines of wartime, and charts the rise of technological research in response to the Cold War. In those days computers were huge, cumbersome machines with names like Demon and Atlas. When Cray came on board, things quickly changed.
Drawing on in-depth interviews-including the last interview Cray completed before his untimely and tragic death-Murray provides rare insight into Cray's often controversial approach to his work. Cray could spend exhausting hours in single-minded pursuit of a particular goal, and Murray takes us behind the scenes to witness late-night brainstorming sessions and miraculous eleventh-hour fixes. Cray's casual, often hostile attitude toward management, although alienating to some, was more than a passionate need for independence; he simply thought differently than others. Seymour Cray saw farther and faster, and trusted his vision with an unassailable confidence. Yet he inspired great loyalty as well, making it possible for his own start-up company, Cray Research, to bring the 54,000-employee conglomerate of Control Data to its knees.
Ultimately, The Supermen is a story of genius, and how a unique set of circumstances-a small-team approach, corporate detachment, and a government-backed marketplace-enabled that genius to flourish. In an atmosphere of unparalleled freedom and creativity, Seymour Cray's vision and drive fueled a technological revolution from which America would emerge as the world's leader in supercomputing.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 An enjoyable read January 28, 2008
Seymour Cray was a genius who devoted his life to high performance computing. This book does a great job of conveying the intensity it takes to be great in your field of choice. Even an exceptional man like Cray encounters major problems which cannot always be overcome.
It was also enjoyable to gain a historical perspective on the culture and work patterns we see in the computing industry today. Cray has to go to such political extremes as moving his entire team to a different town, just to protect the creative process from the day to day demands of business. Not much has changed over the years.
 Thumbs up from a local reader. January 26, 2007
I found the book to be a quick, enjoyable, non-challenging read. It makes an ideal "summer book" for engineers -- a rare thing for technical folks.
Read this book if you live near the Twin Cities. I live in Minneapolis, earned my degree at the U of MN, drive by the old ERA site in St. Paul frequently, live very close to the original CDC HQ on Park avenue, and work with former Cray engineers (who gave the book a strong thumbs up as well). You'll have a strong identification with the characters. The story was a great trip through local history.
Cray the super-hero that created the great supercomputers January 23, 2007
This is a highly recommended book to understand the development of supercomputers, the virtues and failures of Seymour Cray, the composition of highly creative teams that created the supercomputers, the rise and fall of several computer companies. But the author's biggest success is in the depicting of the person Seymour Cray and his inner struggles in creating these machines.
This book should be read together with "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich and "Apprentice to Genius" by Robert Kanigel for anyone who is interested in the creative teams that can produce big innovations.
machines for an irrelevant niche July 10, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
You can of course read this book as a biography of Seymour Cray. But while it describes his genius, it also shows the severely constricted niche in which his company operated. The sheer cost of each supercomputer meant that the client base was restricted to the largest companies and governments. A large part of that cost was due to the custom chips and systems of chips. There never was an economy of scale with Cray's machines.
Meanwhile, other companies like Intel and AMD made CPUs for the mass market. It was these that took full advantage of Moore's Law, and ultimately drove Cray's computers into economic irrelevance. Murray does not present it this way in his book. But while there are somethings you can only do with a vector supercomputer like a Cray machine, for most things, it is far cheaper to have arrays of general purpose CPUs.
The Supermen -- details make this book January 9, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This was an excellent bnook for any one interested in the evolution of super computers. Perhaps even for those with no background in the industry. This is not only a story of techological change, but of a maverick as well. Small versus conglomerate. From the beginning, one reads how a small group of engineers can make somethjing extraoridinary. The book does not diminish the importance of money in the ultimate outcome.
What I liked was the specifics. The details of how a Cray machine accomplished the tasks required for the niche it was intended for. The "why" of engineering decisions and the "how" problems were resolved.
This is certainly a good read for any one interested in not only the history of the computer industry (told in the manner of a novel), but of how dedicated people can innovate, even with the ordinary.
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